The siege was thus virtually terminated, for though the French were beaten out of St. Roman again, and a gallery was opened from that church against the second line; and though two twenty-four pounders, sent from Santander, by sir Home Popham, had passed Reynosa on their way to Burgos, these were mere demonstrations. It is now time to narrate the different contemporary events which obliged the English general, with a victorious army, to abandon the siege of a third-rate fortress, strong in nothing but the skill and bravery of the governor and his gallant soldiers. CHAPTER IV. [Sidenote: 1812. October.] When king Joseph retreated to Valencia he earnestly demanded a reinforcement of forty thousand men, from France, and, more earnestly, money. Three millions of francs he obtained from Suchet, yet his distress was greater even than that of the allies, and Wellington at one time supposed that this alone would drive the French from the Peninsula. The Anglo-Portuguese soldiers had not received pay for six months, but the French armies of the south, of the centre, and of Portugal, were a whole year behind-hand; and the salaries of the ministers, and civil servants of the court, were two years in arrears. Suchet’s army, the only one which depended entirely on the country, was by that marshal’s excellent management regularly paid, and the effect on its discipline was conformable; his troops refrained from plunder themselves, and repressed some excesses of Joseph’s and Soult’s soldiers so vigorously, as to come to blows in defence of the inhabitants. And thus it will ever be, since paid soldiers only may be kept under discipline. Soldiers without money must become robbers. Napoleon knew the king’s necessity to be extreme, but the war with Russia had so absorbed the resources of France, that little money, and only twenty thousand men, principally conscripts, could be sent to Spain. [Sidenote: Letter from the duke of Feltre to king Joseph, 4th Oct. 1812, MSS.]